Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
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Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

Today marks the end of the food stamp extension program, which is heartening for those who fear that boondoggles like Obamacare can’t be rolled back.
One of the discussions that we’ve had on this blog is the libertarian contention that if the federal government is reduced in size, then the community and the state will take care of its own.
In the same week that the average family on food stamps has seen the welfare subsidy drop by about $30/family, Obama held a glitzy fundraiser in Weston, the bluest of blue states. Couples paid $64,500 to dine with the president. One dinner. As I do the math, at the same time that Obama was deriding the Republicans for being heartless (I know someone who was at the dinner), one couple was paying for dinner the amount of money that would have provided food to more than 2000 Massachusetts families for a month. And where was that $64,500 going–to Democratic political campaigns. Although we have not yet seen the numbers, it is believed that the fundraiser, under this same calculation, would have provided food to more than 20,000 families for one month.
Money in politics isn’t just a Republican thing. As the Versailles on the Charles dinner demonstrated, the same degree of heartlessness of shoving fois gras down one’s throat while the peasants dine on spam persists on both sides of the aisle. The difference is, the Democrats like to claim that they are better than the Republicans. Sure they are.